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Author: Matt Chrust

Matt Chrust

Matt Chrust is the Director of Business Development at AHosting and a longtime contributor to the company blog. Matt writes about Website Hosting, VPS and Dedicated server updates and configurations, and staying visible in an AI-driven search landscape filling the gap between infrastructure and hosting services.
  • Setting Up A Blog With Joomla!: A Step By Step Guide

    Setting Up A Blog With Joomla!: A Step By Step Guide

    WordPress may be one of the best blogging tools around, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a shoe-in for your website.  There are plenty of things the competition simply does better; although WordPress is efficient, intuitive, and flexible, there’s something to be said for specialization – which, outside of blogging, is something WordPress lacks.

    The open-source Joomla! is widely regarded as WordPress’s most formidable competitor, is among the most popular content management systems in the world, and  it’s backed by a great development community. On top of that, it’s actually able to handle a larger volume of articles and pages than WordPress, owing to the fact that it was originally designed as an enterprise-level CMS. (more…)

  • Five Tips For Cutting Down Video Size Without Killing Quality

    Five Tips For Cutting Down Video Size Without Killing Quality

    In a perfect world, you’d be able to upload ultra high-quality videos to your website without having to worry about how large they are. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world. As such, one of your jobs as a webmaster is to strike a balance between size and quality. You want your videos to be watchable without having to sacrifice a metric ton of bandwidth.

    Here are a few space-saving tips that’ll help you to accomplish just that. (more…)

  • Why Concrete5 Is The Best Choice For A User Driven Website

    Why Concrete5 Is The Best Choice For A User Driven Website

    The world of web design has changed a lot since the early days of the Internet. With the birth of social media, the user is more important than ever before. Perhaps as a direct result of platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, user-driven websites have never been more popular than they are today.

    This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. After all, the modern web focuses almost exclusively on the user, particularly in light of Google’s recent efforts with its search engine. With that in mind, putting the user first during the design process seems like a rather obvious choice – as does focusing on user-generated content. (more…)

  • Six Tips For Optimizing Your Drupal Installation

    Six Tips For Optimizing Your Drupal Installation

    Drupal is an incredibly powerful content management system, with a high degree of flexibility and customizability. At the same time, it tends to be a touch more resource-intensive than other content management systems  — it’s a bit of a memory hog. If a Drupal installation isn’t properly optimized, it could very easily run into a whole host of performance problems as a website grows.

    It goes without saying that this is something you want to avoid if at all possible.  After all, a sluggish website makes for a poor user experience, a poor user experience makes for lower search rankings, and lower search rankings make for lower traffic. Not really a cycle any webmaster wants to find their site in, is it? (more…)

  • Which Content Management System Is Right For You

    Which Content Management System Is Right For You

    Does your website need a content management system?

    There’s a very good chance that the answer is an unequivocal “yes.” Although there’s certainly something to be said for building and maintaining one’s website the old-fashioned way(HTML and elbow grease), this is generally an impractical choice for anything other than a small website with a dedicated web designer (or a site without a regular update schedule). The fact is that most pages on the modern web are going to require a CMS of some sort in order to function. (more…)

  • The Five Greatest Strengths Of MODX

    The Five Greatest Strengths Of MODX

    Although it might not rival WordPress in terms of popularity, MODX is nevertheless one of the most widely-used content management systems in the world.  Perhaps the primary reason the latter doesn’t eclipse the former is tied to ease of use. MODX tends to be a touch more difficult to use than WordPress, which is one of the simplest no-fuss platforms online.

    Of course, proponents of MODX claim that the initial difficulty curve is more than worth it when stacked against the sheer power and freedom it offers them. Is this true? Just what is it that makes MODX such a formidable CMS? (more…)

  • Why You Should Only Have One Focus Keyword

    Why You Should Only Have One Focus Keyword

    One thing that virtually every SEO plugin of note shares in common is that they only allow one focus keyword per piece. More than once, I’ve heard folks question the reason for this. Wouldn’t it be better in the case of a piece with a wide range of topics to add multiple focus keywords?

    No, not really. (more…)

  • What Your WordPress Theme Says About Your Blog

    What Your WordPress Theme Says About Your Blog

    The theme is arguably the most important element of a WordPress blog. It’s the first thing users will see when loading in, and will impact their perceptions before they even start reading. The impression a theme leaves on a blog’s readers will determine how they view the blog, what they think of the content and, ultimately, whether or not they’ll come back.

    What a lot of authors don’t realize is that a theme accomplishes much more than making a first good impression. By studying how a blog is laid out, it’s entirely possible to accurately judge the author’s personality, what they generally write about, and the sort of content they produce. In certain rare cases, it may even be possible to discern an author’s industry. (more…)

  • Five More Absolutely Essential WordPress Plugins

    Five More Absolutely Essential WordPress Plugins

    One of the most formidable aspects of WordPress as a platform is the immense degree of customizability its diverse selection of plugins affords a blog owner. Unfortunately, no two plugins are created equal, and it can often be difficult to decide what’s worthwhile. How’s a blog owner to know what they should and shouldn’t install?

    It all starts with knowing what sort of functionality you’re looking for – what types of plugins does your blog require to shine? (more…)

  • Maximizing Your Exposure On WordPress

    Content may be king, but it’s nothing if you don’t know how to promote it. Even if you write the best, most enticing and most shareable post in the world and update your blog regularly, it means nothing if people aren’t aware it exists. In order to truly drive traffic to your blog, you need exposure. Obtaining it is a dual process of promotion and optimization.

    We’ll start with the latter. The best advice I can give you here is to install a plugin like All-In-One SEO. Although it won’t do all the work for you, it’ll greatly simplify the optimization process, and make it considerably easier for you to deal with Meta tags and title optimization. Scheduling is one thing you’re going to have to do yourself – personally, I’d recommend that you update your blog in the morning, as t traffic is usually highest around 11 AM. You’ll also need to figure out your focus keyword (think of this as the primary topic of your post). More than just site and keyword optimization, however, you should also practice topic optimization. (more…)